This quarter the blogger-in-chief fell badly behind schedule, so to make up for it we are making one big round-up post of all the news that mattered in Q1.

One of the major highlights was that Prof Ewert Kleynhans received the National Research Foundation’s C-3 rating. The rating shows that Prof Kleynhans is an established researcher (it gives epic bragging rights) and comes with funding to aid future research.

Staff members of also attended courses and presented their work at conferences and workshops all over. Proff Andre Heymans and Chris van Heerden presented papers at the SA Finance Association conference in January. Prof Saayman was in France and Prof Kleynhans in Germany for conferences.

Ms Mosima Ngwenya, Master’s student in the School of Economics, represented the NWU at the annual Nedbank/Old Mutual budget speech competition in Cape Town. She was one of 10 post graduate finalists who ended up tops in an essay writing competition amongst all the tertiary institutions in South Africa. The essay dealt with the affordability of National Health Insurance in South Africa. As part of the three-day outing to Cape Town, the finalists took part in a budget simulation exercise, were interviewed by a panel of top private sector economists, paid a visit to parliament on budget speech day and were interviewed by national media. Click on this link (http://www.enca.com/…/budget2017-finalists-tackle-the-budget) for a eNCA clip in which Mosima played a central role. Well done, you really did us proud!!

It is right at the end of the academic year and we are making research posts!

Yesterday, Greg Foggitt, a PhD student in Risk Management, presented a paper from his thesis at the ERSA workshop on Financial intermediation in emerging markets. The conference was hosted by the UCT Business School. The title of Greg’s paper was “Identifying the determinants of systemic risk in South African banks”.

Last week Prof Marianne Matthee and Mrs Carli Bezuidenhout (along with Prof Neil Rankin of Stellenbosch University) presented their latest research on South African exporters in Pretoria. Their research forms part of a three-year UNU-WIDER and National Treasury project. The theme of the conference was “Growth and development policy: New data, new approaches, new evidence”. The research used SARS administrative data to examine different topics from the characteristics of exporters and two-way traders, through to productivity, innovation, markups and concentration, the employment tax incentive and determinants of wages.

Marianne and Carli’s work with Neil focused specifically on trade and productivity, as well as exporting and labour demand.